Home and Dry
by BeautifulFiction
Summary: Sometimes actions speak louder than words, and comfort can come from the most unlikely source. John and Sherlock pre-slash (or friendship, depending on your slash goggle setting) blanket-fic fluff.


**Home and Dry**

'It's raining.'

John glared at his flatmate who was sprawled, elegant as always, along the length of their sofa. The flat was cold and dark in the midwinter evening, a bleak, grey reflection of the miserable storm outside.

'Really?' he asked, feeling the rain drip off his hair and down his collar as he tried not to shudder. 'I hadn't noticed.'

Sherlock lifted his head, taking in John's drenched form with a dismissive glance before he got to his feet. 'What did you do, swim home?'

'Driver's strike on the tube, and the buses are a bloody joke.' John toed his way out of his boots, shuffling miserably towards the stairs. He was chilled to the bone, and 221B was not exactly a warm paradise to offer succour to his aching body. 'I walked instead. If you get any cases tonight, you're going on your own.'

With a grunt, he eased his way up to his room, peeling off layers as he went and trying to ignore the twinging ache in his leg. It felt as if he would never be comfortable again. Arctic ice seemed to have become trapped in his marrow, chilling him inside and out.

With the air of someone who had no intention of going outside again today, John happily traded his sodden clothes for his pyjamas and terry-cloth robe. Sherlock would sneer at it, unfashionable as it was, but John didn't care what he looked like. His main objective was to trap some of his feeble body heat next to his skin, rather than shivering for the rest of all time.

Of course, the brief transition from dressed-in-clothes to dressed-in-pyjamas had to traverse the brief, shuddering horror of nudity. Up in his bedroom the air was brumal against his bare skin, and by the time he had padded back down to the living room, John's teeth were chattering in earnest.

It took him a moment to realise that the dull monotone of twilight had been chased away by the beginnings of a fire in the grate. Cheerful shades of umber and mellow gold threw the room into deep shadow and stark relief. It was an unexpected kindness from Sherlock, one John would never have predicted, and he shuffled his armchair closer to the hearth in an effort to soak up the heat of the flames.

'Here.' Sherlock's voice made him look up to find a steaming mug of tea in his flatmate's hand. Brief suspicions about drugs skated through John's mind, but right now he didn't care if he had added cyanide instead of sugar. It was honest-to-God tea, made by Sherlock, no less. White vapour uncurled in tempting tendrils from the rim, and John accepted it with a heartfelt murmur of thanks.

Sherlock gave him a faintly offended look – as if being a decent human being was his purpose in life, rather than a rare occurrence to be rewarded and recorded for posterity – before returning to the sofa and losing himself in the darker shadows of gloom that occupied that side of the room. No doubt he would be in his effigy pose again, lost in his musings and disdaining all conversation.

With a sigh, John concentrated on trying to rub some feeling back into his frigid toes. Tremors still raced over him, and he huffed at the discomfort that followed every shudder, making his shoulder ache and his leg echo the scar's complaint.

'Oh, for God's sake!' Sherlock growled a few minutes later. 'How am I meant to think with you making all that noise?' He rose from the sofa before John's tired mind could come up with a response, his kindness clearly expired as he stalked through the flat and towards his bedroom.

Off to sulk in peace, John thought bitterly.

In less than a minute, he was half-buried in the thick down of Sherlock's quilt which was dumped on him unceremoniously from above. Seconds later, bony fingers poked him in the back, forcing him towards the front edge of the seat.

'Hey, what are you –?' John's protest died as Sherlock climbed in behind him like a cat, all lithe grace and bristling indignation.

'You've not even dried your hair. Call yourself a doctor? You can't even take care of yourself.'

John spluttered as a dry, clean towel was dragged through his short hair. He expected Sherlock to be rough and perfunctory, but his hands belied the irritation in his voice, dabbing away the water from John's nape and moving with thorough steadiness through the short, damp spikes along John's crown. Sherlock had somehow insinuated his long legs on either side of John's hips, which left John to either perch awkwardly on the edge of the seat, or alternatively sprawl back against Sherlock's chest. The first was bloody uncomfortable, and the other...

He thought for a minute, considering his options before steadily slumping his weight backwards. He was too tired to argue with himself about the inappropriateness of their positions now. It was not like Sherlock gave a damn about personal space anyway; he would probably think nothing of the fact that John was basically sitting between his legs and sprawling all over him.

Sure enough, a moment later, Sherlock merely shifted to better accommodate him as he continued his ministrations. John, with a rush of faintly guilty pleasure, gradually allowed himself to relax. It was rare that anyone bothered to pamper him. Sherlock could put any gloss on it that he wanted, but the bare-bones of the situation was that he was acting as if John was someone worth looking after, chasing away the chills with the feathery mass of the quilt draped over them both and his own heat gradually filling the impromptu cocoon.

By the time Sherlock dropped the towel on the floor, John was almost catatonic, his eyes heavy and drowsy and his body lax in Sherlock's clumsy embrace. He only managed a faint grunt as Sherlock shifted, getting more comfortable rather than moving away before he propped his chin on John's head.

'Thanks.' John sighed at last, letting his eyes drift fully shut before Sherlock's reply brought a wry smile to his lips.

'Shhh, I'm thinking.'

It was a typical response, lacking in anything like sentiment, but just as John was slipping into a shallow doze, he felt Sherlock's arms tighten: one quick squeeze that spoke volumes.

_You're welcome._

* * *

___A/N:This is something I put together in thirty minutes to cheer myself up after a bad day of rain, disappointment and flooding. Now I'm just sharing the love (because it's nice to share pleasant things.)_

___Follow me at** beautifulfic DOT Tumblr DOT com **for previews, exclusives, updates and news on when I'm actually posting something substantial again :D  
for previews, exclusives, updates and news on when I'm actually posting something substantial again :D  
Much love,  
B xxx  
_


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